I think an external view of what is up or down would be useful for curious visitors, users and hosts alike.
How about visualising the Perspectives network with an interactive map or list on the project site ?
The
reason I suggest this is because I am involved with a network project
that has a similar problem we are dealing with in our next site update.
333networks makes an Open Source "MasterServer" to replace the old GameSpy network.
We
host officially for some games companies, but we encourage other
community hosters to create a global hive, and make it faster and more
reliable than the GS original or anything currently in use.
I have been listing things we should show visitors and feel that some of these would be useful on the project site;
Uptime or last time server responded
Key expiry date
Add country flags to the server details
Show software versions.
Contact details
Server IP or domain linked to Whois lookup service
Traffic-light status for each server.
Green: All OK
Yellow: Server host reachable but client not responding, or giving errors.
Red: Server unreachable.
Seeing
the notaries on a simple world map would help visualise the coverage,
and may even inspire others to fill some geographic gaps.
Also an explanation with picture explaining why different keys are seen etc.
